Lights Out

The second engineer had good reason to be bitter. His false teeth and his ship, equally cherished, were on the Atlantic's bottom, tantalizingly close to the Jersey coast. The lights of a Jersey beach resort had silhouetted the merchantman for the Axis submarine that sent three torpedoes crashing into her. Griped oldster (58) James Robertson:

"The lights were like Coney Island. It was lit up like daylight all along the beach. With all the lights of --* behind us, they could see us easily. That submarine was right there, waiting for the first boat to come along. We're going to lose boats every day if they don't do something about it."

Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox did do something about it. He directed U.S. and neutral shipping in Atlantic coastal waters to follow fixed north-south sea lanes by day, to douse their lights (or face possible loss of masters' licenses) at night if they could not make harbor. Key coastal towns and resorts were ordered to black out. Frank Knox and a submarine-conscious eastern seaboard waited for results. But it was too early to tell.

Sinkings (some of which occurred before the Knox announcement) last week soared to nine, for a total of 48 ships downed in the Atlantic since submarine hostilities opened on Jan. 14. This week the Navy conceded that three more ships were lost. In accordance with Frank Knox's recently announced policy (designed to confuse the enemy), names, types and localities were carefully hidden. But from survivors came tales aplenty. Samples:

> An Axis sub crippled a rickety, old armed U.S. freighter, loosed a parachute flare to illuminate the scene. A contrary wind caught the chute, pushed it back over the sub, shed sufficient light for a carrot-topped Navy gunner on the ship to pound three shells into its conning tower. Survivors insisted that the raider went down with all hands.

> Stumpy, bony-jawed William R. Lowans, ordinary seaman, was in the "pot" (crow's-nest) of a U.S. Navy vessel at twilight one day last week, standing watch on his first trip to sea. Heavy seas frosted his binoculars, rendered them useless. But he kept to the watch. Said he: "I seen this object with my naked eye. It looked like a yaller box, maybe three miles off." The bridge could not see it, pooh-poohed his warning until a ruby-red SOS light appeared. "It" was an orange life raft from a torpedoed ship. Six survivors, one of them already prostrate from exhaustion, were picked up. Commended by the Third Naval District's Rear Admiral Adolphus An drews for his uncanny eyesight, bashful, young (18) Bill Lowans had to admit that he did not know the color of his best girl's eyes.

* Censored.

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